‘Surely,’ you say, ‘surely there are already far too many Italian restaurants on Munster Road?’ And you’re not wrong. There’s that little one a short hop from the Fulham Road for starters, all cheap and cheerful and rammed to the rafters, where they open the doors on balmy nights and let the customers spill onto the street. Any competition would need a fresh angle – calming, sophisticated, stylish – and that’s exactly where C’Alice comes in.
Emphasis, we are told, is on Southern Italian dishes and head chef Carla Murgioni certainly cooks with a lot of love, attention and, when it comes to fish, a bit of flair too. Starters included wonderfully plump pan-fried scallops in grapefruit juice and a satisfyingly crisp-on-the-outside, crumbly-on-the-inside selection of arancini. Unless you’re some sort of all-you-can-eat world champion you’ll skip the next course of pasta and move onto mains such as the exceptional tuna steak in a Sicilian Bronte pistachio crust. A veal steak with Parma ham and cheese rice dominated the plate size-wise, and was also of top quality. The restaurant falls short when it comes to innovative dessert options, but you probably won’t care by then. If there was any fault to be had, it was with a simple Merlot that came in at £25, the cheapest bottle on their list. All in all, though, there’s definitely room in the neighbourhood for this Italian.